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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
Alain de Botton
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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
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City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Grand
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Ambition
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Destinies
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Ambitions
More quotes by Alain de Botton
what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton
Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.
Alain de Botton
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
Alain de Botton
We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
Alain de Botton
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
Alain de Botton
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
Alain de Botton
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
Alain de Botton
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
Alain de Botton
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
Alain de Botton
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de Botton
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain de Botton
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
Alain de Botton
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
Alain de Botton
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
Alain de Botton
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
Alain de Botton
